


Getting Away - A Prologue

by clockworksilence



Series: Something I Can't Have [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Gen, Team Bonding, Team Dynamics, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 15:28:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29653404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworksilence/pseuds/clockworksilence
Series: Something I Can't Have [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2179074
Kudos: 9





	Getting Away - A Prologue

_“_ _Hey. It’s me. Obviously… Listen, something came up, something… Urgent. I wanted to say goodbye but…_  
_“_ _I just wanted to say ‘thank you’. Thank you for… Well, you know what for. And if that sounds pathetic, I’m sorry. It’s not a good way to show gratitude for what you did. What we did…_  
_“_ _...Listen, you’re probably not gonna hear from me again. I don’t- I don’t know if you were expecting to, or if you wanted to. Maybe not. But just know that what you did, what you did for me… I won’t forget it. And I’m honoured to have met you._  
_“…_ _Goodbye, Gael.”_

********* **

It was Booker who had seen the cry for help in the first place. A message on a Dark Web board almost a month ago from a desperate father, begging for anybody willing to help find his daughter who’d disappeared in Turkey after being radicalised by an online group seeking Jihadi Brides.

It had taken Booker all of ten seconds to get in touch with the man and Andy, Joe and Nicky half that time to agree to it.

Though the mission itself was easy enough (three girls rescued from a half-way house 10 miles inside the Syrian border; 8 extremists dead and only minimal fire taken by the team – Andy and Nicky taking a few bullets their bodies quickly spat back out), it was exactly the kind of emotionally taxing, heavy mission that required a certain amount of decompression.

Andy could see the toll this particular contract had taken. Knowing one girl had been brainwashed into giving up her family to serve a cause so warped, so filled with hate and misplaced righteousness, was bad enough. Finding two more, finding the hovel they were held in, the cuts and bruises on their young skin and the fear in their eyes… Even if they hadn’t been attacked first, seeing what manner of horror had been inflicted on those innocent children, Andy, Booker, Joe and Nicky would have killed the men anyway.

 _We need to get away_ , Andy had thought. _Go off grid. Just to make sense of things. Just to be us for a while._

It wasn’t getting any easier.

********* **

The two day trip from Tarsus to Cartagena, holed up in a trade ship so beat up it was a wonder she could still float, was the only truly viable way to travel; you go by road, you have to take the highways. You take the highways, you hit the tolls and the borders. You hit the borders, people you don’t want to be poking around your shit start poking around your shit.

In preserving anonymity, you have to sacrifice comfort.

Between Cartagena and the city of Murcia, amongst the arid plateaus of the south-eastern corner of Spain and up a dusty track off a minor highway lay an abandoned farmhouse. They'd first stumbled across it in the early 1950s - void of life as a chalk pit had sprung up around it which, in turn, closed in the 1970s. No mains power, no nearby houses and forgotten by all but the local fauna, it was as perfect a place as any to take some time and reset. A time for introspection. Reflection. To get back to themselves.

Which, Booker had cynically surmised, was exactly the problem. None of the events of the following few days would have happened if he hadn’t been allowed to think. And the blame lay squarely at Andy’s door.


End file.
